Educational Systems - School or a Selection Process?
In Theory, as well as through Marketing strategies, the widespread idea promoted is that a
formal education is the only path to success over the course of a person’s life. Success being defined as financial gain and status. Acquiring a formal education is difficult even in the best of situations so why does it seem as if so many obstacles are put between the student and the knowledge throughout the educational process?
While Frederick Douglas, born a slave in 1818 prohibited from being educated by his Master, cleared a path to freedom and a better life using only his own wits to “steal” his education, boards, pavement and chalk as his tools, a keen ear and eye in ordinary moments as his classroom, how is it that with over 60% of our budget pouring into the educational system it is still failing? In Learning to Read and Write Douglas describes how he goes to great lengths to ensure his freedom will someday be more than hope. Douglas’s quest for knowledge seems to become an obsession for him that is both a blessing and a curse. The more he knows, the greater he suffers but in this suffering comes a greater desire for more education.
Could it be that those who will succeed throughout the educational system and those who will not is still being chosen for us?
Is it possible education is being used as a weapon, a carrot or worst a selection process to determine who succeeds and who fails?
I would like to ask whoever may be embarking on this journey with me to clear their mind of all past experiences, clear their heart of any defensive feelings that may arise and be open to the possibility that your education came to you or did not for reasons you are not aware of.
It is my theory that the design of the educational system pre determines who succeeds and who fails, with the added input of the choices made internally by teachers through the ranks. The passing of information concerning children, their strengths, weaknesses and alike from one teacher to the next as we grade up through the system should be redeveloped to include the parents in the process. I believe that this information should now come in CD Rom form and that a child’s initial CD Rom should come from the parents. I also believe that parents should be involved in the decision as to who the next teacher to their child will be, based on biographical and historical information concerning all the teachers available to their child as they grade up. I believe that in the future technology will be developed to make these decisions with us, a program similar to Eharmony, I also believe that through this type of development bad teachers will be naturally weeded out.
We don’t have uninvolved parents we have parents who are “unwelcome” in the educational system and that has to change. Historically it has been the expected roll of all parents to blindly support the teacher, help their child with their homework and fundraise. The resistance to parents being actually involved in their child’s education is very real.
As a person and a parent I am not the type of person to blindly endorse or support anyone or anything before exploration. The backlash that my family and I lived through for “exploring” both my children’s side and the teacher’s side of any situation was difficult to endure. I would not rubber stamp my children as right or wrong nor would I rubber stamp the teacher’s as right or wrong. To behave that way would have taught my children that some people in our lives deserve blind trust while other people in our lives do not and I was not about to exemplify that lesson to either of my two daughters. I felt it was my job, as a parent, to be a mediator not a rubber stamp.
Discernment is a valuable tool that ensures a healthy life. If I did not practice discernment when dealing with my children’s teachers and their educational experience how would my children have learned it. Children do what we do not what we tell them to do.
It is with great sadness that I have learned that the best teachers, do in fact, work at the schools whose town’s have the most money. I once believed that my struggles through the public educational system were my own fault or of my own making but after raising two children through the public and magnet educational systems I learned that my own educational experience was by design and determination rather than a deficit on my own part, as were my children’s educational experience. Although I never pursued my formal education I was a very successful business owner for almost thirty years, when I needed information I hired someone to teach me privately, proving to me that I was not what the school had systematically “decided” I was. That “systematic” decision may very well have been passed from teacher to teacher for my entire academic career and yet not one teacher that crossed educational paths with me ever bothered to learn more than my name.
Historically, teachers have never been judged by the outcomes of their own classroom it establishes for me and is verified through my experience that teachers can and do become bias towards some children while supportive towards others ergo it is possible that a child can spend their entire academic career struggling to overcome something they did or did not do with a teacher in the first grade. This is in part why I believe the process of evaluation should include the parents and be put on a CD Rom for viewing by the next teacher chosen to educate that child.
While most believe there is some deep formula as to why affluent children succeed through the educational system more often than those from poor families I believe the reasoning is much more simple. If your parents happen to have a lot of money the educational systems and the people working in it are fully aware that a lawsuit against them is a reality and it remains a factor in the mind of these educators as they perform their functions.
In other words, teachers and staff that work in poor schools are less apt to feel accountable to the outcomes of each student’s success, failure, fair treatment, attention, even the educational laws because the poor students parents don’t have the money to pursue what is legally in their child’s best interest.
Wealthy parents are a factor in the outcome of their child’s education because they have the money to ensure their parental rights and child’s rights are not violated, ensure their voices are heard and ensure their child is tended to in a manner they approve of. The teachers in the wealthier schools are well aware of this fact.
I am not saying that in wealthy schools these same types of problems outlined above don’t exist what I am saying is that they are less likely to interfere with the child’s education and they are generally far more subtle. I lived in a very affluent town for over twenty years their children got “in trouble” as often as children from a poor town they simply did not advertise their problems or involve the judicial system. The standard operating procedure for a child “in trouble” in the affluent town was to bring them home to their parents and the next step was house arrest, sidestepping the judicial system and the media. Often times in private schools the standard operating procedure is to “handle problems internally” which simply means they do not report the crimes being committed by their students to the police...again sidestepping the judicial system and the media. In Hartford the school systems have just established a new program that allows the schools and parents to handle their problems internally without police involvement and to that I would say it’s about time. Affluent town’s have been handling their “troubled children” that way historically, shouldn’t all children be allowed the same alternatives, opportunities, support and educational protections?
After reading an excerpt from “The Banking Concept of Education” by Paulo Freire I can only say that I wish someone had given me this to read twenty two years ago before I had children?
Freire spelled out with complete accuracy that the educational system approaches our children as nothing more than an empty "account" whose purpose it is to show up and, without question, accept the "deposit" of information from the "all knowing" teachers.
My children entered the public educational system in a very affluent town and I was committed to being the parent my children needed to succeed in attaining their formal education. My children were told daily they were going to college and their academic career would not end until college graduation. I had no idea the problems within the educational system were, in fact, rooted in the educational system.
The accuracy of “The Banking Concept of Education” is spot on and I would like to add that there is one step that I would like to take further...no one tells us that this concept is in play. In fact, the branding and marketing of the educational systems indicate something entirely different than what you are actually about to experience. In my professional business opinion the educational system is engaged in a very real bait and switch to which, at the very least, it should be held accountable to clarify.
I had very bright children, most of us do prior to entering the educational system. Our children “learn” a million things prior to becoming a student within the educational system. “Learning” is second nature to most children they are born natural sponges. Eager to grow. Think of all the things your child had to learn just to be ready to walk into a classroom and they learned them, for the most part, with curiosity, vigor, interest, enthusiasm and then we give them to the school....what do we get back?
The problem, at this time, that I am most concerned with is the bait and switch that I believe the educational systems are fully engaged in. If I had been able to explain to my children that the school is a place you are legally required to go to “memorize” information, behave in a certain manner, maintain complete privacy or information can and might very well might be used against you at the teacher’s will and then be passed from teacher to teacher for your entire academic career...they would have understood me. The discussions I could have had with my children prior to the “deposits’ made into them by the “all knowing” teachers would have been very similar to the ones we had about church or any other institutionalized organization they attended.
We are being sold a bill of goods that does not exist and our children are suffering because of it.
We, as parents, prepare our children to enter the educational system and the least we can do is feed them, in age appropriate bite size pieces, the information they need to succeed in a system that is designed to support the employees not the student body.
I do believe in standardized testing but feel that it also has to be overhauled but that is not something that should be done prior to overhauling the evaluation process for teacher’s and the process that our children undergo to grade up. Standardized testing is a tool that is needed to measure the effectiveness of teachers.
In sharing my youngest daughter’s sixth grade math experience you can see how standardized testing should work. My youngest daughter’s sixth grade math teacher’s focus was “behavior and manners” before math so because my daughter was a “tomboy” type of child I kept getting letters sent home about her “behavior and manner’s” the math aspect of the situation was a secondary issue. I did not approve of the teachers “judgement” of my daughter and I attempted to refocus the teacher away from judgement and towards teaching the math lessons. The result of this effort was it made the teacher angry and more determined to force the issue of behavior and manners before math. My daughter never learned math and her behavior and manner’s never changed. The focus of the “pearl necklaced” math teacher was to create “mini me’s” using herself as the template for how girls should present themselves and behave. It was wrong but it was “her classroom” we, as a society, struggle to understand that a “classroom” is not the teacher’s private office it is public space. In the midst of this power struggle that had nothing to do with learning or teaching math this teacher began throwing my daughter’s homework assignments away. I learned this by tracking my daughters homework and taking copies of each assignment so when my daughter would come home with a note that said “Rachel did not do her homework” I would then provide my daughter with a copy of it.
In this particular instance the standardized testing verified that not only my daughter but many other children never learned their math lessons and the teacher was never held accountable.
While teachers remain incensed that that they are questioned about anything standardized testing is, in fact, a control measure.
With 4.5 million students negatively affected by the educational practice known as “passing the trash” in which a teacher is quietly asked to resign in return for a glowing letter of recommendation to secure employment in another school, 300,000 students skipping school on a daily basis to avoid being bullied while at school, these two statistics alone give us enough information to verify that the adults in the educational system are not doing what is best for our children’s protection, health and wellbeing. Schools have proven themselves to be one of the most hostile, dangerous places in our society and more control measures need to be created and implemented. Control measure are quality assurance measures taken in all businesses all over the world so why has the educational system been allowed to historically sidestep them?
Capital Preparatory Magnet School Principal Steve Perry believes “classroom
walls should be made of glass” my experience verifies his belief.
As much as I would love to see the educational system reformed it is not going to happen any time soon, the Unions are simply too powerful and politically engaged but in the meantime the kindest and most protective thing to do to prepare our children to enter the educational system is to tell them the truth.
The first time my oldest daughter picked up a candy bag that said...”You can win $$$$” she was not even five years old. She knew instinctively through the flash of the color, the feel of the paper and the $$$ signs that there was something great inside. I fully explained to her what marketing was all about and what a scam was. I fully explained to her the “design” of the outside was to prompt her to pick it up and buy it and “no $$$ was coming our way” My child was not dumb....she completely understood the explanation I gave her and grew to understand the overall concept of marketing. There is no reason in the world we have to be “sold’ on the educational systems in the manner they are.
To add insult to injury we, the parents, then pump the same marketing the educational systems sells to us to our children, then our children go to school and learn not to trust us and rightfully so.
Then we, as a society, put our hand on our chin and ask the age old question “What is the problem with all these kids?”
If we want to educate our children we cannot wait for education reform or lightening to strike. We must engage our children in age appropriate bite size pieces of the truth. If we want our children to be successful in their time within the educational systems they must grow up feeling that they can trust their parents more than they trust the school, we are their parents.
The educational systems are a business and the design of the systems is to meet the needs of the employees not the students. The Connecticut State Department of Education has now publicly amended the nondiscrimination employment clause to include: The Department of Education does not unlawfully discriminate in employment and licensing against qualified persons with a prior criminal conviction. In English and Spanish. Which means the educational systems have a better understanding of how important the truth is to parents and the general public. That new amendment to the nondiscrimination employment clause was not publicly changed for the protection of our children, it was changed to protect the Department of Education from being sued when parents find out, as I did, that a teacher can remain a fully employed certified teacher with multiple arrests and convictions in their background. Is that something that is best for our children.
My own educational experience coupled with my children’s educational experience is not the only experiences that mold my opinions on our educational systems. I was a Custodial Manager
at a State University and at a private school, in those employment positions I was allowed unfiltered daily observation of the educational system from an inside perspective, again verifying for me that my opinions were accurate. If what is occurring in our schools were in another setting, such as a home, the adults involved would be arrested for neglect and risk of injury to a minor. We, as a society, cannot continue to accept the claim that we have an entire nation of bad parents.
Education begins and ends at home, it is a lifelong process but the only part of our education that is recognized is the one the government acknowledges. We, as a society, value the degree more than the welfare and wellbeing of our own children. Education is America’s business.
I think every parent would agree that although we cannot protect our children from everything certainly we can arm them with the truth of what is expected of them, of the laws of the land, of the intent of the educational system as a whole. We can explain to our children that learning to “deal” with whatever teacher they get is a critical part of their educational experience because teachers are a protected demographic. Historically, parents were programmed by the educational system to “sell” their kids on a belief that school is difficult on purpose to prepare them for life, this is just more propaganda. Life is not an extension of school.
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined” Henry David Thoreau
